Animus
by lysne
Summary: After Stefan kills Katherine, Damon raises the stakes over Elena. D/E/S 3-part POV
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All characters belong to LJ Smith and the CW network.

Reviews are motivating and greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading. : )

_What if Damon took Elena in the one way that Stefan never can?_

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_Damon POV_

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It is a slow torture that Stefan endures. Slow because that is the only way to approximate my own pain, and slow because this game balances on a high wire. It can only end when one of the three of us ends up dead. Like Katherine. Staked in the heart by Stefan five months ago.

I watch from the shadows as Stefan meets her, his smile not quite reaching his eyes to begin with. She pretends that nothing has happened. But he smells her blood. Whether or not she can sense his reaction I don't know. But to a vampire it is unmistakable. The slight intake of breath, the dilated pupil, the quickening of the heartbeat. And for Stefan, the shock and the pain of knowing where I have been and what I have done.

In her human naiveté, she believes she can distract him with caresses and gentle, reassuring words. She kisses him lightly and runs her hand along his upper arms, his muscles taut with tension. Her brown eyes belie the normalcy of her tone. They plead with him for understanding. They shine at him with love and concern. Her hand lingers on his jaw.

I embrace the wave of jealousy just as I have learned to do. The intensity of it reminds me that I am still alive. In a manner of speaking.

Unconsciously she touches a hand to the bandage on her inner thigh, drawing Stefan's attention to it. He can no longer resist, can no longer pretend that all is fine. Stefan draws up her skirt, fingers the bandage, and peels it back to reveal two perfect punctures.

He can smell me on her. My scent is mixed with the small trickle of blood oozing from the wound.

Stefan curses loudly. Struggles for control. He smashes a lamp against the wall at lightning speed. His fangs are bared and he pants for breath. She doesn't take a single step backward. She only absorbs his emotion, just as she absorbed mine. It occurs to me that she is most likely to be the first to die from this feud. She is a human caught in the middle of forces she can't even understand.

A tinge of guilt is suppressed ruthlessly.

Stefan's back is turned toward her, his hands supporting him against the wall, placed on either side of his bowed head as he breathes raggedly. Struggling to get it together. She gives him only a few moments before quietly wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. Her head lies down and rests against his back.

Stefan shuts his eyes. Maybe he is praying to a deity that only he could still believe in.

What she could never understand is that to Stefan, I have taken her in the most intimate, most forbidden way. To her, it is just a blood donation. The price of preventing me from staking Stefan in cold retaliation for what he did.

Yes, she submits her body to him only. She is ever faithful to her lover. But his veins and his whole being are on fire with the scent of her blood and the knowledge that I have taken it. She could never understand that the line I have crossed is his last and most secretly desired frontier. And that there is a part of him that feels betrayed.

Of course he cannot tell her that. And he cannot take her himself. That is the boundary he has set. The price he pays for her.

She tells him that it didn't hurt. A lie. That I don't force her often. True. I do it only as often as I can without provoking Stefan to murder me in my sleep.

Small things trigger my insatiable desire to torture Stefan. Seeing him happy, truly happy, for even a moment. The two of them lost in one another, forgetting me completely. Forgetting that Stefan stole Katherine from me once more and this time for eternity. That he has left me with nothing, and he with everything that matters to him. Elena. And his own goddamn humanity.

Sometimes the trigger is seeing her so loyal and so tender to him. Everything I ever wanted from Katherine and never got. Never deserved. She's so fucking naïve. I want to slap some sense into her. He is a _vampire_ for god's sake. She is going to end up either dead or undead. In those moments I want to teach her what a vampire really is. I want her to learn.

Then there are the times that I just want her.

All of this Stefan knows. And there is nothing he can do to stop me. Not without getting someone killed. He doesn't want the guilt on his conscience. Which is not to say that he wouldn't kill me if I pushed him ever so slightly further. But, I push and I push, stopping just short of his breaking point every time. This is my price. My price for letting them play house. Letting them have each other.

Stefan turns her around and presses her into the wall, kissing her desperately. He handles her gently but urgently as if tonight was the last, undressing her and laying her soft naked body under his own.

I watch as long as I can bear it then listen to the sounds of their lovemaking until they are finished.

I don't hear her tears afterward but I know they are there. She cries every time they are together after I have bled her.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: All characters belong to LJ Smith and the CW network.

Reviews are motivating and greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading. : )

_What if Damon took Elena in the one way that Stefan never can?_

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_Elena POV_

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Damon came to me the day Katherine died. His eyes were wild with pain. He was sorry for my sake, he said, but Stefan needed to pay. I have always stood up to Damon in the past, even when he threatened Bonnie or myself. But this time was different. I sensed that in this moment he was truly capable of anything.

And it wasn't because Katherine was dead. He might have killed her himself, eventually. It was because she died never having recanted her love for Stefan instead of him.

Damon believed Katherine really did love him, in her own way. Didn't she know that she and Damon were two of a kind? And they were. After emulating her for 150 years, he understood Katherine. No rules.

But now she was dead and he never received anything he needed from her. Not an apology, not an admission of love, not a refutation of everything she had ever shared with Stefan. It was too late.

For the second time, Damon blamed Stefan for her loss. And this time it was his fault. Katherine had been rampaging all over town impersonating and threatening me. Stefan made the decision to kill her if he got the chance. He could not tolerate the risk to my life. So without warning to Damon or anyone else, he staked her.

Damon looked half-drunk with mania that night.

For the first time, I begged him. I pleaded with him to calm down. I told him that hurting Stefan wouldn't bring her back. I told him I would do anything to protect Stefan. He had done it for my sake though he knew he would lose his own brother for it. And I loved Stefan. I would do anything for him.

Move, Elena, or you'll regret it, he said coldly.

I can't, I said. My earlier sense of self-preservation had been eclipsed by real fear for Stefan. He's not here, I added truthfully.

Damon's head cocked to one side, observing me. A predatory look in his eyes. I held perfectly still, like a mouse that has realized a cat is watching from afar. But it was too late. Damon closed in on my space. He breathed in the scent of my hair. His lips grazed the side of my neck, teasing it.

If you would do anything, he murmured, then you would let me have a taste. He lifted his head and caught my startled gaze with his steely one. And I understood. This was about revenge. This was about hurting Stefan. A little drink every once in a while, he said.

I felt paralyzed. But instinctively I realized that the Damon that may have cared was unreachable right now. A chapter was closed between us. I belonged to Stefan and Stefan was irrevocably his enemy. The Damon I had grown to know, to care about, had been supplanted by the vampire that wanted to hurt me for hurting him. For choosing Stefan. Just like my double.

I closed my eyes. Dreading my answer.

Could I… die? I finally asked. Of course, he answered, but that would take all the fun out of it now, wouldn't it.

Will it hurt? I said. Yes, he answered. Damon was always truthful.

Damon, please, I whispered. Something in his eyes flashed, but then it was gone as soon as it arrived and the Damon I knew slipped out of my view. This Damon relished my plea. Yes or no, he said with a smile.

Yes, I said, quietly but with resolve. But all of this is your choice. You don't have to do this.

But I want to, he breathed and gripped my forearms, looking me up and down. My blood froze. He was going to do it. Damon could smell my fear and it aroused him. He ran a finger from my temple down my exposed throat, and trailed it over the slope of my breast and down to my hipbone. Elena, he sighed.

And with that he plunged his teeth into my jugular.

I could literally feel huge surges of blood drawn out of my body. It was agonizing. Helplessly I grasped at Damon's shirt.

The edges of my vision began to black out. The moment that I felt sure I would lose consciousness, maybe forever, I felt Damon release my neck. He caught my frame in his arms and lowered me to the ground. Shhhhh, he said, comfortingly. He shrugged his shoulder to wipe the blood off his face, looking at me with interest and concern. He smoothed my hair back from my face.

I rolled onto my side and curled into a ball, gasping. When I recovered, Damon was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: All characters belong to LJ Smith and the CW network.

Reviews are motivating and greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading. : )

_What if Damon took Elena in the one way that Stefan never can?_

* * *

_Stefan POV_

_

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_

I knew from the moment that I first laid eyes on Elena that if I stayed, I would ruin her life. But I could not have imagined it would come to this.

For weeks there would be nothing, and then one day I would find her with a set of puncture marks on her wrist, or her waist, or her neck, or a series of marks trailing toward her bra. Sometimes there would be a deep scratch on her stomach or her thigh. And always his scent mingled with her blood, taunting me. Damon was driving me mad. Exactly as he intended.

What did he want? Maybe he wanted me to snap from the temptation and drink Elena's blood myself. Or to attack him in a rage, then get the better of me and kill me. Or maybe he just wanted to see how far she would let him go.

He certainly wanted to take her from me. The ultimate revenge.

I had to see it for myself. Force myself to watch. I left the house, doubled back, and hid from view. She was in my bedroom when he found her. I could see him savor the idea of having her in my own space and leaving the evidence strewn about for me to find.

He came to her and Elena fought him. Refused to surrender easily. She was always strong willed because she refused to see herself a victim. Even though she knew that Damon preferred it that way, she couldn't help resisting. She was nothing if not loyal. She quarreled with him, made him angry, told him the truth about himself. But she knew better than to run.

Damon took what he came for anyway.

I watched, transfixed and sick to my stomach, as Damon ripped her shirt open in the back and drew a deep, deliberate scratch across her lower back. Rivulets of dark blood opened up, dripping down into her curves below. He paused for a moment in anticipation then drew his tongue along the wound. His hands puckered her skin on either side, drawing up fresh reserves, his tongue retracing the trail down just to the slope of her bottom.

She winced, a small groan. I gripped the banister with balled fists, at war with myself. What kind of a man was I, that I could not even protect her from my own brother. Everything in me screamed to intervene. To impale him and be done with it.

And I would have. I would have broken my tacit agreement to let this sick theater play out all on the small chance that my brother could again be rescued from his own demons. Only one thing stopped me. He was stronger and I had to know what I was up against. How deep his feelings for her went. If I went for him, would he kill her first?

By the time Damon had lifted Elena onto the bed for the main event, he had made sure that her blood had trailed onto the carpet and walls all around the room. To invade my senses and torture me later. He could not know how well it was already working. Her aroma was everywhere.

Damon stared down at his prey with great interest. He nuzzled her cheek, her exposed neck, skimmed her chest, and finally bit her in the soft flesh of her waist. She cried out in pain. Still drinking her, Damon reached out and clasped her hand to comfort her. The scene was unbearable but I could not look away.

When he was finished he rose and pressed a cloth into her side to staunch the flow. She simply watched him, the dark pools of her eyes meeting his gaze. Now, now, he said. Don't look at me like that. You could have just said no. But Damon took another cloth and applied it to her sweaty forehead. His sudden gentleness did not seem to surprise her.

How long are you going to do this, she asked him. It's killing Stefan.

His eyes flashed darkly. It's killing me too, he said. This is the only way I can ever have you.

She whispered, you don't have me, Damon. You're hurting me.

Damon sat down next to her on the bed. He caressed her cheek. You need rest. I can make you sleep, he offered. She gave a short nod and wordlessly removed her vervain necklace. Her gesture of trust was unnerving.

Damon put his hands on either side of her face and looked into her eyes until she dropped into a deep sleep, peace relaxing her features. One small tear had escaped her closing eyelid. Damon brushed it away with his thumb. He leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth, then turned and left the room.

She was left for me there, asleep in my own bed. Blood dripped from a crescent shape in the soft flesh of her waist. Half had dried, half still ran lazily in a deep red rivulet down her side and into my sheets. Her hair was tousled, her clothes torn in places, revealing her rib cage.

Elena was so still I checked her pulse to reassure myself. Then I climbed into bed beside her, wrapping her into my arms. One thing was clear. She would not forgive me for killing my own brother. For giving up on him. Because she hadn't.

That was why I loved her. And why I would have to live another day under Damon's slow torture.


End file.
